


Gavotte, Minuet, Stagger

by bigolegay



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Cuckolding, Cuckoldry, Dancing, Drunkenness, F/M, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Teasing, They are all drunk and in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigolegay/pseuds/bigolegay
Summary: “This is-”“Exhilarating?” Thomas was a little drunk, his face pink and shiny, his cravat and neck stock loose and his hair tousled. He had taken off his wig as soon as the last guest had left, and his outfit looked incomplete without it.“I was going to say ridiculous.” James admitted.Thomas, Miranda, and James dance drunkenly in the ballroom once it is empty.





	Gavotte, Minuet, Stagger

**Author's Note:**

> [AstronautSquid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astronautsquid) once told me ' _don't feel bad about just unscrewing the top of your head and letting all the id spill out_ ', which kind of maybe basically translates to ' _know no shame_ ' and I would like to thank her for that because it meant that when I was struggling with my current writing project and this tripped over my mind, I ran with it.

“This is-”

“Exhilarating?” Thomas was a little drunk, his face pink and shiny, his cravat and neck stock loose and his hair tousled. He had taken off his wig as soon as the last guest had left, and his outfit looked incomplete without it.

“I was going to say ridiculous.” James admitted. He watched as Thomas moved around him in a slow, skipped circle. Miranda laughed from her seat at the harpsichord, her fingers missing a key and setting the whole thing out of rhythm.

“Come now,” Thomas grinned, and guided James into a turn with one hand in his and the other at his back. They dipped off-beat, and James snorted in amusement. “I can hardly be blamed for wishing to dance with you.”

“Oh? Is that what we are attempting to do?” James quipped, and Thomas laughed, too loud and too long to be anywhere near sober. James could smell the sherry on his breath, could see the tears of laughter wetting his eyelashes. He laughed along with him, enthralled. Miranda faltered in her music with a laugh of her own, the _minuet_ fading, and tapped the ivory in a new, jaunty tune.

“How is it that Navy officers dance?” Thomas asked, his hand still wrapped around James’, eyes glistening, cheeks bunched in a wide smile.

“Drunkenly,” James replied, and Thomas laughed again, an infectious sound that pulled James along.

“Well we’re halfway there then, aren’t we?” He squeezed James’ hand and James squeezed back. “Come, show me.”

He let go of James unexpectedly and beckoned Miranda over. James had already danced with her briefly, hands touching and feet skipping over the ballroom floor in a mass of twirling bodies before they inevitably twisted away and moved along in the dance to another and another.

Thomas and Miranda switched places eagerly, pausing to press a kiss to each other’s cheek as they passed, and then Miranda was before James, a vision in a fashionable gown of sculpted blue taffeta and white, frothy lace. He took her hand to kiss in a traditional bow. At the harpsichord, Thomas began to attempt something that sounded like it may have once been a shanty, and Miranda, obviously with more wits about her than her husband but still on the road to drunkenness, gripped James’ hand tight with a beguiling laugh.

“Lieutenant,” she said, curtseying. Her earrings swayed from her lobes, catching what remained of the candlelight.

“Lady Hamilton,” James murmured in reply, and he pressed his lips back to her hand with teasing firmness. Miranda laughed delightedly, and shuffled closer to him. “I must warn you,” he continued, “there is a reason dancing sailors do not wear such dainty shoes as yours.”

He had glimpsed them before the party had begun – two pretty embroidered and heeled slippers with generously polished buckles. They were beautiful, but impractical for dancing anything more energetic than the moderate _courante_ or _gavotte_. Sailors did not dance with finesse or moderance, and James wanted to see her undone, unclasped.

Without hesitation Miranda pulled away to bend down and pull up her skirts, presenting one foot forward. “Well then, remove them, and transform me.” She crooned. The stool upon which Thomas sat creaked as he leant heavily to one side, watching. He had abandoned his music, hands balancing his stretched position instead. With a smile James sank to his knees and clasped one of Miranda’s ankles in his hand.

Her stockings were slippery and silken, and James knew that he would have to remove them as well, or she would surely slide on the floor. The thought called want to his body, his grip firming a little. He unfastened the buckle of her shoe with eagerness and eased it from her foot, damp with sweat and hot to touch. Then, with a glance up at her face, swept his hands up the tense curve of her calf towards her garter. A grin bloomed on her lips, and she peered at him from over her stayed breasts. If her feet were hot then her thighs were burning, and James excitedly fumbled against their softness as he unfastened the garter and rolled both it and her stocking off the long line of her leg. Thomas made a wounded noise, and James heard Miranda’s earrings clink against her necklace as she turned her head to him. She placed her bare, dainty foot to the cool floor, and presented him with the other.

James repeated the motion, but this time as he reached her garter he pressed his hands higher, up the smooth skin of her inner thigh, until he could feel the dampness of her crotch, and her public hair tickling his fingertips. He heard her gasp, her body twitching under her touch and hips canting forwards in invitation. She was still gazing at Thomas, who sat with a white-knuckled grasp on his stool, transfixed. James wondered how Thomas would react if he followed his hand with his lips and tongue, if he disappeared beneath her skirts right there in the ballroom, far from the secret nook of their bed. He imagined him watching them, and his mouth watered for it. But the staff for the night were not yet to bed, and he knew they waited in the kitchen for the go-ahead to come in and retrieve the crystal glasses left about the room by milling guests. So, James cast the idea aside, but made sure to remember it, knowing just the mention at some later date could sent Thomas into a frenzy.

He removed Miranda’s last stocking, tucking the pair of them and her garters into the pocket of his frock coat, and set her shoes off to the side as he stood. A quick glance at Thomas told James that the man was still gazing at the two of them, his face flushed with more than just drunkenness, his eyes wide and dark.

“A tune, if you will?” James asked him, and watched as his friend and lover pulled himself from the image they made and re-set his fingers on the keys.

It was still just as tuneless as it had previously been, and Miranda grinned at the ridiculousness of it all as James hooked his arm in hers and span her wildly on the floor in a mockery of country dances. She shrieked with laughter, hair coming undone from its perfect braiding, and James, happier than he had been in years, laughed with her, spinning her this way and that, switching and doing so again in the opposite direction until she was gasping for them to stop, her hand clutching her side as she laughed. James staggered off, laughing and closing his eyes against the dizziness in his head. Thomas’ playing petered off so that the only sounds in the room where that of their heavy breathing – three pairs of lungs, three hearts, three bodies, hot with alcohol and want. He felt Miranda touch his cheek.

When James opened his eyes he met her beaming face, her rouge-blushed cheeks shining with joy, her glittering eyes, and he felt his breath leave him in a rush. He remembered the first time he had seen her in the Hamilton’s carriage. She was so mysterious, so beautiful, and had at the time felt untouchable. Now she was before him, still as stunning, but touchable and knowable, open and receptive to his presence. He could smell her perfume, her sweat, the suet-pomade in her hair, and desire caught in his stomach. Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, he bent to kiss her deeply, grasping at her neck and waist.

She sighed against him, her nails scraping into his hairline, her bodice pressing into his stomach. Her lips were loose against his, mouth wet, and it was easy to open his lips against hers and press his tongue into the heat of her mouth. The harpsichord stool squealed against the polished floor, and Thomas’ uneven footsteps came quickly closer. Miranda pulled away from him in time for Thomas’ hot, large hand to cup his cheek and pull him in for a ravishing kiss with tongue, and nipping teeth.

Miranda’s hands were on his chest, his back. They stood there in the empty ballroom, swaying together, until finally Miranda, clearly the soberest of them all, tugged her husband by the lace of his cravat, and all three of them retired giddily to the privacy of the bedroom.

In the morning James’ head was aching, his appetite diminished by a weak stomach. Thomas was even worse; he insisted on drinking a mixture of ambergris and rose water before he would leave bed. And Miranda, whose constitution could withstand a tropical storm, watched the two of them with a knowing smile on her face and music in her heart, and hummed to the two of them the melody of a _bourée_ as she dressed and rubbed her stubble-burned thighs together with delight.

**Author's Note:**

> Things I researched for this fic: The exact names of the dances I knew the appearance of, but never what they were called. Eighteenth Century hangover cures. Videos of drunken people spinning each other around.
> 
> Come and scream about Black Sails with me on [my tumblr](http://fabulous-lesbian-queen.tumblr.com).


End file.
